In phase one of this THINKTANK I put this idea out to the world. Here’s the start of one part of my garden for this year! A work in progress but herbs and veggies are growing!

Now it’s on to phase two.

In a brief recap here’s what I have done on this idea since phase one:

I have had conversations with two different possible partners on this project.

One would be a high scale event that attempts to bring people in from all over the state and would actually stay in hotel rooms to attend this event.

The other partner would keep the event local and we would focus on bringing in sponsors from a revenue standpoint.

I got venue quotes and it seems that I would need to either find a venue that has a vision of an in-kind sponsorship and would give me the place for free because they believe these attendees might also use their place for future bookings OR I get to pay a nice venue somewhere in the range of at least $10,000.00 to put this on!

This leads me to believe I get to find a venue that aligns with Men’s Retreats and the power of tapping into male buying power that would see value in being promoted as the venue sponsor.

A few ideas of locations would be the Barn at Franklin Park Conservatory, a yoga studio, the Columbus Idea Foundry, or Vue Columbus (where Columbus StartUp Week was held.)

It’s not in my budget to spend five figures in year one on an event.

I’ve had conversations with several partners and believe I could have a killer lineup of speakers, seminars, and sessions.

Every single one of them also believed they could help co promote it to get people to show up.

Overall with the feedback I have gotten this thing moves past phase two and I get to seriously considering putting this event on and together for later 2017 or into 2018.

What do I get to do next?

Move on to phase three and put together an outline, make venue choices, and ultimately a partnership model that would make sense for all parties involved.

I also get to build out how many people I would need, sponsorship dollars raised, etc to make this at least a break event situation.

For now this is just a passion project. But I believe it has legs to go beyond this into at least a side hustle. Phase three will be about seeing how and when this project can get done.

More to come!

What do you think of the idea? Any thoughts or ideas of what you would like to see included or things that I should consider?